


Dreams of a New Old God

by darknessgryphon



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: A smidgeon of metaphysics, Control Ending, Gen, but it is implied that people die, that is a thing, there is no actual death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-16
Updated: 2013-05-16
Packaged: 2017-12-12 00:26:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/804981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darknessgryphon/pseuds/darknessgryphon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>They had names once, the reaper thinks. It was one of them once, the reaper thinks. It, too, had a life before sleep.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dreams of a New Old God

Deep in the heart of the galaxy a reaper slumbers. It does not wait. It does not plot. It dreams. There is nothing left for it but to sleep. 

A thousand husks of lives once lived skitter around in its belly with nowhere to go. They had names once, the reaper thinks. It was one of them once, the reaper thinks. It, too, had a life before sleep. 

Little red pigtails.

Little red pigtails bobbing along between footsteps and a strong wind.

Legs—tiny, inefficient—catching on pebbles underneath a clear blue sky. A man's arms catch her. 

He smiles. 

He smells of sweet things. Cookies and cakes and her name spelt in frosting. 

Another man smiles like that. Will smile like that. It hasn't happened for the girl with the little red pigtails yet.

A thousand husks skitter along the reaper's insides keeping its guts from splitting into the vacuum of space. They groan like lungs overtasked. 

The reaper remembers how to breathe. Heaving chambers catch and release the atmosphere. The reaper remembers that it cannot breathe in the darkness. 

The airlocks shudder. It cannot hold its breath.

Sneezes. 

It wasn't born underneath the clear blue sky. There were corridors. Cold metal like the inside of the reaper's hull. That was home.

Here there's a clear blue sky that gives way to purples and oranges and darkest blue. It's hot. The sweat trickles through the red bristles on her head. The pigtails were shorn off long ago. 

She waits among trees with her hands wrapped around a training rifle. The back of her neck twinges. 

Static. 

She sneezes.

Leaves rustle. Surrounded. There are parameters, but she ignores them. She always ignores them. 

The rifle lands with a thump. Rustling. She signals her squad among the trees. In this commotion, she imagines one of a different sort. Alcohol. Her squad victorious, looking up to her.

They float in formation past dying suns and desolate planets in their slumber, clustered together. The reaper remembers creatures from Earth. Whales. 298374927323 extranet hits. An instructional holo from this cycle. The reaper drifts in the center of the pod. 

It is the new old god and they listen to her for guidance.

She isn't afraid. 

This is a ship like any other. Like the one she was born under to the fierce woman who holds her stories. 

These people know her other stories. The ones of war. The legacy. The name they say with respect.

The man with the familiar smiles gives them to her, the reaper thinks. A man with humor, a doctor. Another man that makes her feel—

It is difficult to remember the individual parts of the unit. 

There were many of them once, it thinks. Not like the pod of reapers. Not like the husks crawling in her hull. 

She used to watch them. She used to dream about their lives.

A turian. A quarian. A salarian. A drell. Asari. Krogans. Humans. The man that made her feel—

Time has passed in the ticking of her network. Husks scurry inside her. She does not watch anymore. She does not remember their names. 

They sleep. 

And in the heart of the galaxy among a pod of reapers a new old god dreams.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking today about the control ending Shepard I haven't quite finished. Then for the first time in a long time, fic happened. More miraculously, I found my courage to post. We'll see if that lasts long enough to continue posting old fics like I keep planning to.


End file.
